Cubanarchie (partie 2)

Meghann
31 déc. 2015
2 min de lecture

Viñales, December 9th to the 11th 2015

It was hard this morning to get up early because we went to bed late yesterday. Our new neighbour, Victor, a really friendly Cubano, brought us to a bar where there are mostly just local people. We dansed for hours and drank and laughed. It was great... Even though this morning it is, indeed, a little hard to get up. But here we go! We're off on a new adventure to Viñales, in the Piñar del Rio region (about an hour and a half from La Havana).

At the bus station, taxi drivers are, as always, very insistant and try to convince us to get into their car. We decided to share a cab (what we call "taxi compartido") with a very sweet couple from Spain that was going to the same little town.

We fell right in love with Viñales, a town that we like to compare to Banff. It is indeed very green: There are trees and mogotes (some round-shaped little mountains... made of immense rocks) everywhere and cars pulled by horses. The spot is very touristy (which means there are taxi drivers screaming "TAXIIII" and lots of "casa particulares" (ie Bed and Breakfasts. According to our hostess, there are about 700 of them) everywhere. But we do understand why there are that many people wanting to visit that place. There is a good vibe and a slow pace that will make you want to take your time and chill out (even though my boyfriend and I are known to be slow...haha).

All around, there are some small farms where they grow coffee, tobacco, sugar cane and fruits.

On our second day, we rented bikes (that I negociated to an awesome price) to explore the surroundings. In the area, there are a vast variety of caves that are waiting to be explored. On our way out of town, we stopped at the first one (a really touristy one) that was transformed into a restaurant. We didn't want to pay to enter as we felt that it was kind of a tourist trap. So we kept going and we stopped at La Cueva del Indio (Indian's Cave) where a boat took us inside to explore. It was also very touristy, but the cave was long and tall and it was quite impressive. Had we had more time, we'd have visited caves that are out of tourists reach but it's okay. It was still awesome to explore what we could.

We spent our last day in Viñales at a beach called Playa Jutías, that is about an hour away from the town. We went with some new friends that we met at our casa particular and they showed us how to do some accro-yoga. It was a great day: We had good weather, the landscape was awesome and so were our new friends.

Viñales was indeed very generous with us... We had some great experiences there, met some incredible people (that we sure hope we'll stay in touch with) and laughed nonstop.